Madison, WI[1] January 31 – Four jets go down, two pilots die due to bad weather
There was a report of an "Unidentified Plane" in the air between Madison and Milwaukee. About 5 p.m. six F-86 Sabre Jets took off from Truax to investigate. They found no suspicious plane, but as they prepared to return to Truax the weather took a nasty turn.

Two of the jets (Lt. Col. Harry Shoup and Capt. Howard Mattes) managed to land at about 6:30 p.m. The four others turned back toward Milwaukee. But the weather wasn't getting better and fuel was low.

Major Otto Kemp jettisoned from his plane which crashed into a marsh in the town of Rutland. Booth Holker also bailed out over Dane County. Holker's demolished plane was found on the shore of Little Muskego Lake in Waukesha County. Holker parachuted safely onto farmland south of Stoughton.

By Monday, Feb. 2, the plane of a fifth pilot, Capt. Hampton Boggs, was found in Genesee Depot and the Plexiglas canopy of a sixth plane, Lt. Donald Van Ells, had been located 15 miles to the south. Bad weather hampered air searches but 3,000 people joined in a ground search for the pilots, who Air Force officials believed had parachuted from their planes.

On Feb. 3, a woman on a farm near Wales, three miles from where Boggs' plane was found, discovered his body. It was covered by snow and his partially opened parachute.

On Feb. 5 Van Ells' body was discovered on a farm near Waterford in Racine County. It appeared Van Ells jumped from his plane at a low altitude and there was insufficient time for his main chute to open.

[2] November 23 – Jet on test mission crashes, two die
An F-89 Scorpion jet airplane takes off from Truax Air Force Base on a test flight of newly installed engines. Less than a half-hour later, the jet crashed into a marsh in the Arboretum, killing both Air Force pilots aboard, Lt. John Schmidt and Capt. Glenn Collins. While the test seemingly went fine, when the plane headed back, witnesses below reported hearing an explosion.

[3] November 23 – Jet disappears over Lake Superior with two aboard
Less than six hours later on the same day another Truax Air Force Base F-89 Scorpion jet disappears over Lake Superior with pilot Felix Moncla and radar observer Robert Wilson. The plane and its Madison-based crew, temporarily based at the Kinross Air Force Base in Michigan, were never found. Moncla's last words from the cockpit were, "I'm going in for another look." They had been dispatched to track a large unidentified flying object that radar had spotted near the U.S.-Canadian border. The F-89 was followed on the radar screen at Kinross until its image merged with that of the UFO it was following, then it was lost. That odd radar image of the mystery craft seeming to swallow the jet, then both disappearing from the screen, has fueled extraterrestrial theories. U.S. officials claimed the rogue blip on the screen was an off-course Canadian airliner, but Canadian authorities have denied that any of their planes were in the area. No trace was ever found of the missing men, the F-89, or the UFO.

Gord Heath, a UFO investigator, has spent a lot of time trying to learn the fate of the missing Truax F-89. Heath believes that in some complex way he possessed memories that could only be the memories of Gene Moncla, the F-89 pilot. And he believes that the F-89 had indeed been abducted by a UFO in 1953. http://www.ufobc.ca/kinross/

There's a documentary that was partly filmed in Madison, including Heath in Moncla's old residence, titled "The Moncla Memories" by Canadian filmmaker David Cherniack. In the film, Heath details the memories and images that led him to the conclusion of his relationship with Moncla. One memory includes Heath's parents being present on the alien ship when Moncla was abducted, and Moncla being told he cannot return to his old life but might instead be reborn as another human. Gord Heath was born nine months after Moncla disappeared.

There was a hoax story in 2006 of the jet being found in "remarkably good condition in perhaps 500 feet of water".